“You’re looking at it from a purely academic perspective,” said Bill. “But John’s got to think of Mari. You want Mari to sign the Nook over to the historical society, and that’s all very noble, but what happens to Mari? Her money’s tied up in that place.”

“Oh, he’s not doing it for Mari,” said Emily. “He’s doing it to line his own pockets. History is bigger than just people!”

“Some might say history is just people,” said Bill thoughtfully.

Emily snorted. Annie wished they would all bugger off, so she could hoover up her dinner. If they didn’t sling their hooks soon, she was likely to plunge her face into the food and start devouring roast parsnips.

Pam squeezed Emily’s shoulders and planted a kiss on her head.

“Come on, Emily, my love,” she said. “Let’s leave poor Annie here to eat her dinner and give the local politics a rest.”

Emily stood and arm in arm went back to the bar with Pam.

Bill placed a cruet set on the table and said, “Enjoy!” before he too left her in peace at last.

—

Happily stuffed and having received texts from both Alex and Peter to say they’d each arrived home safely, Annie headed out of the pub. As she pulled open the porch door, she was confronted by a man wiping frantically at a gray slick of bird shit on his head with a supermarket receipt.

“Happens to the best of us,” she said as she let him pass. He grimaced at her, and as the door squeaked closed she heard Bill’s voice ring out through the pub: “Shit on?”

Annie parked herself on one of the benches on the lawn and listened to the birds noisily settling down to roost.

The Pomegranate Seed was closed on Mondays, so the waning of a Sunday (one of their busiest days of the week) was always plump with the promise of liberation. Habitually, she felt that promise now, and then she reminded herself that it wasn’t just Monday she had off but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday . . . it was a lot to comprehend. What would she do with all that spare time?

She thought back to when Alex and Peter were little. Annie would drop them off at school or nursery with hugs and kisses, and then she’d race home to get the house straight before work at eleven. At three o’clock, she would dash back to the school gates to pick them up. A play in the park, help with homework, cook dinner, do bath and storytime, brief the babysitter, and head back to the restaurant by seven fifteen p.m. to oversee the dinner service.

School holidays were a whirlwind of guilt and self-loathing.

“You’re amazing!” people would say. “I don’t know how you do it!”